US debate sinks into ugly mess
Things get heated as Trump and Biden talk over each other and the attacks turn personal
THE FIRST debate between US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden deteriorated into bitter taunts and near chaos on Tuesday night.
Trump repeatedly interrupted his opponent with angry and personal jabs. There were also heated clashes over the president’s handling of the pandemic, the integrity of the election results, personal attacks about Biden’s family and how the Supreme Court would shape the future of health care.
The two men frequently talked over each other, with Trump interrupting so often that Biden eventually snapped at him: “Will you shut up, man?”
“The fact is that everything he’s saying so far is simply a lie,” Biden said. “I’m not here to call out his lies. Everybody knows he’s a liar.”
With five weeks until election day and voting under way in some states, Biden has a lead in national polls and in many battlegrounds.
Trump tried to control the conversation, interrupting Biden and talking over the moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News. The president tried to deflect tough lines of questioning to deliver broadsides against Biden.
Wallace pleaded with both to stop talking over each other. Biden tried to push back against Trump, sometimes looking at the camera to address viewers and snapping: “It’s hard to get a word in with this clown.”
Again refusing to commit to honouring the results of the election, Trump suggested that mail voting, which has surged in popularity during the pandemic, was ripe for fraud.
When asked if he was willing to condemn white supremacists and paramilitary groups, he said: “What do you want to call them? Give me a name. Give me a name.” Biden mentioned the far right, violent group known as the Proud Boys. Trump said: “Proud Boys, stand back, stand by. But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa ( an anti- right wing protest group) and the Left because this is not a right- wing problem. This is a left- wing problem.”
Biden attacked Trump’s handling of the pandemic, saying the president waited to act when the virus reached America’s shores and “still doesn’t have a plan”. He told Trump to “get out of your bunker and get out of the sand trap” and go in his golf cart to the Oval Office to come up with a bipartisan plan to save people.
Trump snarled: “I’ll tell you Joe, you could never have done the job that we did. You don’t have it in your blood.” He struggled to define his ideas for replacing the Affordable Care Act on health care and defended his nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, saying she was “phenomenal” and “respected by all”.
He criticised Biden over the former vice- president’s refusal to comment on whether he would try to expand the Supreme Court in retaliation if Barrett was confirmed to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The scattershot debate bounced from topic to topic, with Trump again refusing to embrace the science of climate change. Biden accused Trump of making a race- based appeal.
“This is a president who has used everything as a dog whistle to try to generate racist hatred,” Biden said.
He said the country faced systemic racism and that while most police officers were “decent” there were “bad apples”. Trump said Biden’s work on a federal crime bill treated the African- American population “about as bad as anybody in this country”. The president pivoted to his hardline focus on those protesting racial injustice and accused Biden of being afraid to use the words “law and order”, out of fear of alienating the Left.
“Violence in response is never appropriate,” Biden said.
Trump said Biden’s son, Hunter, had inappropriately benefited from his father’s connections while working in Ukraine, although a report from two Republican- led Senate committees did not link Joe Biden to any wrongdoing
Before the debate, Biden released his 2019 tax returns days after revelations about Trump’s tax history, including that he paid only $ 750 a year in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and nothing in many other years. The Bidens paid nearly $ 300 000 in taxes last year.
Trump insisted he paid millions in taxes, and said had taken advantage of legal tax incentives, which led to Biden declaring Trump was the “worst president” the nation has had.